Irregular news and analysis mostly about the once-great state of South Dakota

Saturday, October 27, 2018

Philip, Haakon County likely ground zero for KXL protest

I was in Philip the day of the Challenger explosion in 1986 because I drove out there from Deadwood twice a week for two years and got to know the town all too well.

Recently, it has been home to Trace O'Connell who spilled beer on a group of American Horse School students. During testimony a teacher from the school said she felt beer hit her, too. Remember Rapid City businesses shat all over themselves trying to extinguish the wildfire of anger over entrenched racism as organizers of the Lakota Nation Invitational sought alternative locations for the annual event. Sioux Falls, Bismarck and Spearfish were considered.

Matthew Reedy testified that he was part of a large group of 14 or 15 friends from Philip that traveled to Rapid City on January 24 to attend the hockey game in a luxury box leased by Eagle Sales of Rapid City and given over for the game to Don Carley who owns the steakhouse in Philip and is an Eagle Sales customer. When asked by defense counsel Michael Butler if O'Connell had been drinking he replied, "Yeah. He was. Everybody was drinking up there." He said he saw O'Connell raise his arms and wave them over his head like he was roping, demonstrating from the stand a rodeo cowboy's motion. It was this waving that caused beer to spill from his can of Bud Light, according to Reedy. [KCCR]

I know Don Carley: he's an arrogant bigot just like the rest of those stupid yachos from Philip are.

While Carley isn't sure what to expect from the pipeline construction, he has his sights set on making some extra money at The Steakhouse, a sit-down restaurant and full bar he runs in downtown Philip. Carley doesn't open the restaurant on Sundays, but he may reconsider that approach once the pipeline crews move in. "You'll always have people who want to go have some drinks and a good meal," he said. "Or if they want to watch a football game or baseball game, where else are they going to do that?" [Big hopes, big worries surround Keystone XL pipeline plan]

Attorneys for the Trump Organization will stop at nothing to erase Barack Obama's legacy including accelerating the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, a warming climate and an eventual American Indian rebellion to protect treaty lands. The Bad River country in Haakon County is pretty awesome that includes millennia of human history with bison habitat expanding into the horizon.

Approximately 200 people attended the TransCanada Keystone Pipeline meeting held at the American Legion Hall in Philip, SD, on Tuesday. The majority of the interest came from land owners, but also on hand were local business owners, water and electric company representatives, local law enforcement, city, county, and school officials, and area contractors. The main conversation was concerning the “man camp” that will be built north of Philip, SD. An estimated peak population was stated to be close to 1,200 people. “Once we are set up, we are part of the community and we want to be a good neighbor,” said Robert Latimer, Facility Land and Permitting Manager for Keystone XL Project. Most of the meeting drew upon question and answering. [Large Attendance for Keystone Pipeline Meeting]

Graves are often uncovered or disturbed by Borg-like construction operations frantically creating the conditions for sprawl.

Less than 3 percent of 8,000 acres in Iowa affected by a proposed pipeline was surveyed by a professional archaeologist. The Corps of Engineers is just required to perform archaeological surveys on 16 of the 17 major river and stream crossings.

Meade County in South Dakota is facing charges of desecrating burial sites when excavators besmirched sacred lands adjacent to Mato Paha (Bear Butte) for another road through Indian Country.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has closed the application process for a position as Region 6 archaeologist to serve the states of North and South Dakota.

After watching how easy it is to pull the wool over SDPUC's eyes TransCanada is redoubling its efforts to engage landowners and has decided to go straight to Nebraska's GOP-owned Public Service Commission even as man-camps in North Dakota are becoming ghost towns. Royal Dutch Shell is abandoning its efforts to drill in the Arctic in part because of tanking oil prices but another Republican donor continues its land grab in South Dakota.

Genesee & Wyoming, the parent company of the Rapid City, Pierre and Eastern Railroad, conducts the business on the west end of the state-owned track and operates on the right of way that intersects the proposed Keystone XL pipeline at Philip. Rail cars carrying diluted bitumen could be loaded there then be transported through Pierre, Huron and maybe Brookings then south through Sioux Falls to the depot at Cushing, Oklahoma; but, the same geology that thwarts railroads and forces engineers to rebuild I-90 between Reliance and Rapid City and I-94 between Mandan, North Dakota and Billings, Montana every year also makes construction of the Keystone XL pipeline untenable.

Running a bomb train through white towns won't fly when you can build a leaky pipeline through stolen treaty ground so it's hard to imagine these projects going through cemeteries where people of European descent are buried.

Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska says support for TransCanada's day in court is facing its final argument and that the pipeline will never be built.

The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe has created a website to raise funding and awareness for the dispossession of treaty land, natural resources and to provide information about the nation's battles against the Dakota Excess and Keystone XL Pipelines.